Biomanufacturing seeks to produce commercially valuable products (e.g. chemicals and pharmaceuticals) using engineered cellular systems. While molecular biology has delivered a host of new tools to engineer microorganisms, plants, and mammalian cell lines, each of these platforms are limited in the diversity of products they can make on their own. An exciting alternative is to take a cue from nature. All microorganisms on earth thrive in dynamic, multi-cellular communities (consortia) where they cycle carbon, compete for nutrients, and produce valuable products – most of which cannot be observed from a clonal cell population. Consortia-enabled biomanufacturing would divide difficult conversion steps across microbes, and even identify completely novel products from microbes that serve as the next wave of natural products.<br/> <br/>Anaerobic consortia evolved unusual abilities and microbial partnerships that permit them to thrive in the most extreme environments on earth. However, they are typically recalcitrant to culture, and have not yet been harnessed as biochemical production platforms since the mechanisms that control community structure and stability are poorly understood. We developed new methods to isolate co-dependent, anaerobic consortia from the feces of large herbivores. Together, this system of enriched microbes constitutes a mixture of anaerobic fungi, bacteria, and archaea – each are specialized to cycle carbon between them and process plant waste into methane-rich biogas. Remarkably, these consortia have been stable in culture for over 2 years, despite having drastically different individual growth rates and nutrient needs – this observation suggests that other factors modulate their partnership to promote overall stability of the consortia. We will further discuss the roles that interwoven metabolism and secondary metabolites play on microbial consortia dynamics, both in natural and synthetic systems.<br/>

Better together: Biomanufacturing with microbial consortia

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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